"Kembujeh Highway"

My dad as resident barber likes to try out new hairdos on the boys. It was Pierre's turn for a haircut today, and my dad made him look just like him. He cleared out a runway right down the middle of his head and called it "Kembujeh Highway."

The other boys loved it. Please look at Santos' face (in the red and black jersey)

When my dad pretended that the machine had stopped working and he was left with a giant bald patch in the center of his head, Pierre nearly cried haha

Cookies

Our kids have a notorious sweettooth. Actually, I think it's just a Gambian thing. Sometimes they make this thing where they just tear up chunks of tapalapa and stick it in a bowl of water and dose it generously with some sugar and eat it like cereal. Personally, as much as I love most Gambian food, I've never developed much of a taste for the stuff.
Fyi, tapalapa is this awesome bread we have in the gambia. We get ours from the bakery just down the road. Some people call it foot bread. Well, when I was small someone told me it was because they kneaded the dough with their feet before sticking it in the oven (this giant clay structure that I remember visiting when I was really really small in Somita). Well, it turns out there's a perfectly logical and hygenic explanation for this name that has nothing to do with one's foot-kneading abilities. The bread is a foot-long.
Anyway, 30 loaves are delivered to us by this little boy every morning. He bikes in with a box full of tapalapa at around 6.45am and it's my job to make sure they're all there and keep a record of all the loaves of bread. This boy doesn't seem to understand any English or Mandinka, so I'm in a bit of a pickle. I think the only word he knows is "Yes," because every time I say good morning, his reply is, "Yes." And every time I ask him his name, his response is, "Yes." In any case, it has become my personal mission to discover this kid's name. I think he's Fula (?). Yeah, not sure. I don't know a lick of Fula.
I made a bunch of sugar cookies for the kids, and they loved it. It took several attempts, however, becuase our new oven is way too complicated and I had to keep an eyeball on it the whole time, otherwise it would consume the entire thing. I made the mistake of putting it on a timer at the start and ended up with 9 perfectly lovely charred cookie dough remains that needed to be soaked in hot water for the next few days to even make a dent in the thing. Yes, our oven is like a fiery furnace, and I'm a little nervous about making a cake in it (that's what the kids want next haha).
Anyhoos, this is me and Moniya on the right, Iso (short for Isatou) on the left, and Janke is peeking in through the back.

Speaking of Janke, Janke has finally mastered my name. She also appeared in our house in a towel yesterday with Sukunda. I think they ran all the way across the compound from the girl's dorm like this. I have no idea what they were doing, but they wanted a picture.

And Noah hurt his foot :(

He won't tell me how he did it, so I bet it's embarrassing haha

Where's Pa?

Let's play a game. Where's Pa?
See if you can spot him in all these pictures.
He has taken the title of camera hog to a whole new level.

First Banjul Expedition

Yessss. We have finally finally finally made it to the capital, and oh what a capital. The arch was still there, as was the statue of President Jammeh in his glory military days holding a machine gun in one arm and a young child in the other. We bought paint for the Kembujeh nursery school which I think is basically all done with the pencil outlines. Alas and some of the other boys walked after us (I took some kids in the truck earlier the back way... my mom nearly had an aneurysm waiting for me at home, I think), and were loitering and picking cashews off the ground. Cashews are a big deal here, especially since the whole Senegal-Gambia border fiasco, the price of cashews has gone way up.
Anyway, back to Banjul. They put up all this decoration, something that looks like a wire Christmas tree (?). We're not really sure what it is but its MASSIVE, and there's a billboard that says Happy Birthday to the president with his face smackbang in the middle of it right next the faux-Christmas tree. They'd also put all these garlands in the real trees for his birthday.

Anyway, to the more important matters about this Banjul trip. I used to make fun of those people that would take pictures of the food they eat, but I think I understand on some deeper more meaningful level now. You know, sometimes you just want to remember the things you eat. Don't be a hater. Well, first of all we went to this new place called Crown instead of Ali Baba, ever since that incident 2 years ago when my friend Jenna's chawarma had like a worm in it. My dad has nobly decided to boycott the shop for all time. So we found this new place.

So we had chicken and lamb chawarmas yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:

And please note the meat pies in the background.
For your personal benefit, dear reader, here is a close-up. HAHA

And ALSO fyi, we got our Senegalese visas today, so our trip next week is a go. YIPPEE

Sharon

One of the sweetest girls, Sharon, has been sick for the past couple of days :( She came out to the field this morning though, where Pierre and Alas and Santos tried to put me throughvarious soccer drills which made me look entirely ridiculous. She sat there with my iPod listening to Westlife, bless her heart haha.

Sharon is one of the girls that actually knows my name (Janke is still working on it... hahaha... she keeps calling me Garam. I suppose this is legitimate as even my parents get us confused sometimes. Still.). Her birthday is on August the 24th and she told me that she was going to write me and e-mail and send me a present on my birthday. Hanging out at the girls dorm is clearly going to be a problem anyhows because whenever I go there they keep giving me food. They gave me Ebe and pastries and they always cut me mangoes.
Anyways, hope Sharon feels better soon.

I love my Mama

This is where my mama usually is, always conjuring up all kinds of delicious things in the kitchen. :) She's grand and so pretty.

She has what we think is carpal tunnel and maybe arthritis? We're not really sure but her joints and one of her wrists is constantly sore and swollen, so please be thinking of her :).

Ha-ram! Ha-ram! (Having fun with the camera)

It's always interesting to see how people pronounce my name. I've heard "air-rum" and "are-rum" and "are-eee-um" and "airy-umm," but coming back home has reminded me of just what a huge variety there really is. Here I'm also "Ha-ram" or "Arram" or "Adama" or "Awa" or (my personal favorite) "Eowyn." I'm not really sure where that one came from. But I guess there are way too many vowels in Ahreum.

Diminga's the girl with the contorted face haha she always carries our Bibles and songbooks back to the house after the service, and loiters in our living room with the other girls. I think that she likes to be helpful, and it also gives her an excuse to hold our hand on the way back.

Sukunda's the one with the blue and yellow dress in teh front that likes to bring me things to eat all the time. She's also a gangster and likes to get into fights with AB (which she usually wins). They scuffle and wrestle on our living room floor, and sometimes my dad pits them against each other for fun haha. Lisa's the one in the red plaid sweater which she wears typically with the hood up, rain or shine, and she's a card fiend. You couldn't tell from the looks of her but she could probably take you down in a game of take two so be careful. June's hanging out in teh background with Charles (one of the new kids) and Mai's got a death-grip on my neck. Soraya's a new girl that's standing right next to her and she's cute as a button and she knows it.

Look What My Dad Can Do!

Not only can my dad cut hair, he also fixes shoes for the kids and mends their clothes haha... he's a regular handy man and this center wouldn't function without him.

And I just love this picture. The kids love him.

Sibanor

I spend yesterday and this morning with my sister in Sibanor. They have a really nice set up over there, and it's so peaceful compared to the chaos that erupts here in the center... no knocking at the door constantly, no little children fighting, no incessant arguing haha. I missed them though. When we were driving out, Alas, Musa, and Celeste wanted to come with us, but of course we couldn't take them. I was supposed to take the gele gele back to Brikama today but Dr. Han and his wife were so nice as to drive me back. With the new roads, it takes only like 30 minutes now! It's amazing. On the other hand it made me a little sad because the new roads split open what was a beautiful countryside. You can still see the construction and the guts all around in the blood red sand that's piled on either side. Its like the trucks and cranes and tractors have come and sliced open the belly of where I remember I used to sit with my mouth slack open in the back of the car driving back from Somita and gape at the beauty of the green. I went to the Sibanor Church and saw the Erskines there - the pastor was this feisty old man who was shaking from what I assumed was age (or the spirit, who knows haha) and shared a really meaningful sermon in Mandinka. From time to time he had both hands gripped tightly on either side of the pulpit to steady himself. Seeing him limping slowly toward the altar, you wouldn't have seen so much spirit in him, but if there's anyone who's so proud and so fired up about preaching, it's this man. On the other hand, sadly, we missed the soccer game last night, and as a Man U fan, I am disappointed in myself.

Hair Hair Everywhere!

Dad took it upon himself to become the resident barber for the day.
Here are his victims:
(Please note AB's face in the first picture...bahaha)

And then this is Joseph trimming my dad's beard. Joseph is a notoriously slippery card player, but I beat him the other day at the girl's dorm. It was a moment of pure glory.

Im off to Sibanor to have a sleepover with the sister.

The ODPC Nursery School at Kembujeh

For the past 2 days, my project has been trying to get the pictures up on the walls so the paintman can start doing his painting. We took a truckload of kids with us today who wanted to see (our truck is just about on its last leg. On the way back from Darsilami yesterday the clutch refused to work at all, which was a little bit of a problem, and even this morning you had to pump that thing and it still was being all weird. Dad predicts its complete demise in the next few days), and they were very helpful, holding up their fanoo so that I could actually see. The temperature's not very hot, but the sun and the humidity are making me sweat like a stuck pig.

On a completely different note, my mom made a special napping area behind the bookcase hahaha.

How can you not love a woman like that?

Sanna

5 Things You Can Do On a National Holiday

1. Get a haircut.

2. Color pictures.

3. Eat.

4. Hang out at the girl's dorm with the puppy.

5. Show the Mandinkan Jesus film at Darsilami with Sanna, Alas, Ojen, and the Padre.

Happy Birthday Mr. President!

Today is a national holiday because it's the president's birthday.

All the kids are home, and a whole horde came our with me to the field this morning. Mai and Sukunda and the rest of them were all hanging on to the back of my shirt, which made the whole exercise a little more challenging but they were feisty and determined not to be left behind haha.

Suwaibou's also coming back from Ghana today where he's been studying at a Bible school for a while now. Everyone's fighting to get on the car that's going to the airport.
This is AB and Pa in front of our house. AB is still a camera hog. And we're not really sure what happened to Pa's shirt...

A Suprisingly Smooth Drive Down Memory Lane

Election fever has only just begun, and you can tell because a) the aforementioned cookies which are being distributed at random from the tops of cars and b) the colored flags. Jammeh's pretty popular because he fixed up the road, and he even brought in electricity (well, not quite yet, but they put up the pylons and everything in Sibanor which is a step) to the more rural areas of the Gambia. Whole villages declared their allegiance by the colors of the flags they had all up and down their main road. Jammeh's flag is green, and it just so happened that the village we used to live in, Somita, was an avid Jammeh-supporting bunch. Look at this

We stopped by intending to pay a visit to Judy Cosier who is living in our old compound. I hadn't been there in years, and for some reason it looked a lot smaller than in my memory. I guess my body grew but my memories stayed the same. There was still that little concrete slab in front of the tower where me and my friends made food for fun in a tiny aluminum pot, there was still the nursery school where my mom taught, there was still the tree where the flying snake fell out of and the villagers beat it to death with a stick, there was still the front porch where the giant black scorpion came and our guard wore it down and killed it and where my dad would teach Sunday School from time to time. And there was still the awesome jackfruit trees in front of our house - we were going to take some until we found out that they weren't even close to being ripe yet.

But the swing - the whole tree - in front of our house was gone, the tree under whose shade our guard used to take daytime naps was gone, and the faces that came to the door when we knocked on the house we used to live in was not my mom or my dad scolding me for being late after mooching off of my friends' parents.

Then there was just the holes and the nagging feeling in my gut where I knew that something wasn't where it was supposed to be but my mind couldn't fill it, and I think those were the saddest of all. We went past Somita because we were dropping off the schwester at her internship with Sibanor Clinic. She's gonna be gone for 6 weeks, and the kids are very sad. They are also sad because I think she accidentally took the deck of cards with her and so all festivities in the jemberengo have come to a standstill.
On our way back we actually swung by the Erskine's house and talked to Debbie Erskine for a while. I really miss Abi and they were still at BCS (boarding school). Hopefully we will get to see her before she leaves though.
Oh, and I was THIS close to having to preach at the service tonight because of Alas. Bah.

On the bright side, Sukunda (who is posing with a rock and a stick, both of which she found laying on the ground. She insisted I take a picture.) brought me some Ebe and a cooked mango today! It was yummy. She and Mai keep bringing me things to eat. Yesterday they brought me one of those tart mangoes they picked from one of the trees on our compound. Even though usually have so little anyway that they can only let me have a few bites, and even though I think it's making my belly sore, I can't say no.

The Pied Piper

My dad gets up at 4.30 in the morning every morning to exercise. He used to run around outside in just his shorts until one day he ran into an unsavory character with a weapon who demanded that he give him everything he had on him, which happened to be a cell phone. Mind you, this was just on the main road in front of our house, not like deep in the bush or anything. Ever since he's just been exercising inside our compound, and he has a gathering of 7 or 8 of our youngest boys who follow him up and down the driveway like a tiny swarm of bees.

My sister's going to Sibanor this afternoon to start an internship at the Sibanor Clinic, and she'll be there for six weeks. We're seeing if we can sneak her into Senegal with us in the beginning of June, though.

In the Morning, Early in the Morning

6am services resume today. The number of little kids in the younger service has exploded, and I still haven't learned everybody's names.
After the service, the kids do their chores and then breakfast. This is my dad guarding the bread haha (also Moniya in the uniform and Jacob trying to swindle another loaf of bread)

The Bet

So, Alas was photocopying these things

and he made a bet with Garam that there would be a total of 51...
she thought there would be 50.

There was 50.

Alas will not be eating tomorrow.

The Compound

Look how nice it looks. Dad planted some flowers too, so once the rains come it'll look even nicer.

This is the jemberengo. This is where the party's at.

And then this is the view of our driveway from the front gate. We might change the building on the left into the new elementary school! Building and plans still in progress :)

Last Card... Arrest!

First game of Take Two of the summer in the jemberengo (woop woop!).

Meanwhile Alas is stuck in the house running photocopies for my mom

and all the little girls adore him. They're sitting behind him yelling out words for him to spell, while they write on the backs of the messed up photocopies. Alas says he wants to be a soccer superstar when he grows up but he says the little girls keep saying he should be a teacher.
I went over to the girl's dorm and watched them make sato. They were pounding, and all the girls were taking turns except for Sharon who just kept trying to pluck unripe mangoes from the tree overhead. Eventually Aisha brought in reinforcements in the form of a very disgruntled, but well-dressed Musa.

Oh, and Kinta got her hair redone by Anna Marie. It looks so pretty now.